


The Girl Who Didn't Go Back

by Smokeycut



Category: X-Men
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Domestic Fluff, F/F, LITERALLY, refusal of the call
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-20
Updated: 2018-07-20
Packaged: 2019-06-13 10:52:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15362955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Smokeycut/pseuds/Smokeycut
Summary: Kitty Pryde almost shared a kiss with a certain friend, and she almost lived a normal life, and she almost left the X-Men behind her. What if "almost" wasn't almost? What if she did?





	The Girl Who Didn't Go Back

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sniperct](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sniperct/gifts).



> Snipe wrote a fantastic Cassandra Cain fic for me, so I'm paying it back. So have a piece of an AU I might follow up on someday.

College was _different_. That was the best that Kitty could come up with to describe it. Back at the school, she was always trying to keep up with the X-Men, always trying to survive, and always learning about the harsh truths of the world, but truly feeling at _home_ there. But then the X-Men died. And then at the lighthouse, she was always trying to understand the insanity she was dealing with, always moving and never able to think for long, always in awe and feeling like she was forging her own path.

But college was different. It was slow. Days came and went and the most pulse-pounding thing that would happen was when a bigoted student shouted a slur her way. It was monotonous. Boring. She had so much time to just sit and study and daydream. She found herself thinking about the past a lot. About all the people she had met, and how she missed their antics. At college, the only familiar face was Xi'an's, and they had never been close back at the mansion. Kitty wasn't even sure that they had spoken to each other more than twice until they found each other again in Chicago. That was different too. Her friendship with Xi'an didn't have the youthful vibrancy and fun that she had experienced with Illyana. Similarly, in a way, the fire and passion of her time with Rachel was nothing like the calm, quiet peace she and Xi'an shared with one another.

It was different, but different was good. Different meant that Kitty had time to finally process everything she had been through. Her sessions with Dr. Lyzinski went a long way when it came to understanding the trauma she had experienced when she was a kid. It always felt so _normal_ at the time. But sitting on that couch, opening up to her therapist, Kitty realized just how far away from normal it had been. Kids shouldn't spend their days fighting terrorists and supervillains. Kids shouldn't date nineteen year olds. Kids shouldn't wake up in the middle of the night with tears in their eyes because their _family_ had _died_ on tv. 

College was different, and Kitty was different too. She was still quick to anger, and she was still damn proud of who and what she was, but she was _angrier_ about how she had been _manipulated_ , and she was _prouder_ of the identity she was exploring as an adult. She wasn't a superhero who could walk through walls. She was a young _woman_ who could walk through walls. She was Kitty Pryde, not Shadowcat. That was a name she didn't miss hearing.

The way she looked at people was different too. Or rather, the way she looked at _girls_. She was sure that she had had feelings for Yana and Rachel before, but she hadn't been able to understand those feelings in the slightest. She interpreted them as jealousy, and as intense friendship and nothing more. But by the time she started looking at Xi'an, she understood why she felt weak in the knees and why she smiled uncontrollably. 

She had started spending more and more nights in Xi'an's apartment. She slept in a sleeping bag at first, while Xi'an took the couch and the twins took the single mattress that Xi'an owned. But then she and Xi'an had found another mattress while taking a late night walk, and when they dragged it into Xi'an's place, they collapsed on it the minute it was inside. They laughed, happy to finally have something halfway decent to sleep on again. And then Kitty looked at Xi'an's eyes and she realized how _mesmerizing_ they were. How deep and brown and beautiful. She realized then that _Xi'an_ was beautiful, in a way that nobody else was. In the way that someone becomes infinitely more beautiful once you _love_ them. 

"What are you looking at?" Xi'an asked. She pushed Kitty's hair back and smiled that damned smile. The one that made Kitty's heart even softer.

"Someone special," Kitty whispered before she took the plunge.

The kiss they shared that night was certainly different from the ones that had come before. For the very first time, a kiss felt right. That night, when Kitty fell asleep with her arms wrapped around Xi'an and her cheek pressing against Xi'an's chest, Kitty didn't think about Dallas or England or any of the times she nearly died. No, that night, Kitty went to sleep thinking about how she wanted to spend the rest of her life with the people in that tiny little apartment in Chicago.

And the thing was, she never did go back. She got a call, about three months after graduation, not long after she and Xi'an found a roomier apartment. Scott wanted her for some team, and then Logan hopped on the line and backed him up. She almost said yes, almost dropped everything just to be an X-Man again. But then she looked over to the other room and she saw Xi'an building the table they ordered from Ikea. Saw the headband that she had started wearing again to keep the hair out of her eyes. The way she rolled the sleeves up on her flannel and the way that accentuated the muscles in her arms.

And then she heard Scott repeating the question on the other end of the line.

"Will you come back?"

"I can't," she told him, saying the words a bit too quickly and a bit too forcefully. "I can't drop everything just to be a superhero again. Sorry. Can you find someone else?"

"I'll try giving Kurt a call," Scott said, after a small pause. But she was hardly listening again, and after an absent minded goodbye, Kitty had docked the landline and joined Xi'an in the living room. The kids would get back from school soon, and they wanted to surprise them with the new coffee table. Maybe they'd dig out a movie to watch together that night.

"Sounds nice," Kitty said, leaning in to nuzzle Xi'an from behind. She looped her arms around her girlfriend's waist and hugged her gently. It really did sound nice. Far nicer than the life she left behind.


End file.
